The number of patients suffering from Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome (AIDS) has increased dramatically since the first cases were reported a few years ago. The disease has caused opportunistic infections and secondary cancers in more than 50,000 people in the United States and many more throughout the world. Patients suffering from AIDS are often nutritionally unbalanced and wasted. Weight loss and decrease in serum albumin, total iron binding capacity and retinal binding protein are often seen. Body composition analysis in AIDS patients demonstrates a depletion in total body potassium and body fat content with an increase in extracellular water. These symptoms are often seen in those suffering from chronic malnutrition.
A number of factors lead to malnutrition in AIDS patients. These include a decrease in food intake, vomiting, the side effects of therapeutic drugs and a high incidence of malabsorption syndrome with or without diarrhea.
When malabsorption syndrome and/or diarrhea do not permit effective oral feeding, parenteral nutrition is indicated. Conventional parenteral nutrition compositions and methods of therapy are unbalanced attempts at nutritional restitution. They contain too high a fat content which, if administered too rapidly, can exacerbate the formation of pro-inflammatory prostanoids and prevent the beneficial effects of low-fatty acid administration. This invention permits administration of the desired level of egg phospholipids and triglycerides over a longer period of time without exacerbating pro-inflammatory prostanoids or inducing fat overload.
It is also known that some of the manifestations of AIDS are ameliorated by non-steroidal anti-inflammatory agents. It is believed that these effects are related to a preferential suppression of certain prostaglandins by these agents. Prostaglandins are synthesized in the body from fatty acid precursors which are derived from lipids. The composition, rate of administration and concentration of neutral lipids, fatty acids and lecithins administered parenterally can determine the prostaglandin synthetic pathway and thereby the specific class of eicosanoid being preferentially synthesized.
Thus, there is a need for a low fat - high phosphatide parenteral formulation for the treatment of AIDS patients either as a component of total parenteral nutrition of as a parenteral supplement to patients receiving nutrition orally.